Thursday, February 27, 2014

Lenovo N700 Wireless and Bluetooth Mouse AND laser pointer


So I got this mouse. It was on sale.  $20 or so with shipping. The normal retail is $45 on Amazon.com.

It is the Lenovo N700 Wireless and Bluetooth Mouse AND laser pointer. Basically, this means it is a dual wireless mouse. You can use the supplied RF dongle or use it with a Bluetooth 4.0 computer. It also has a trick up it's sleeve. That trick is converting itself into to a laser pointer for presentations.

It is definitely a good looking piece of gear as it transforms into shape as a mouse or flat into a laser pointer.

There are definitely dozens of reviews out there so I won't get into specifics. However, if you are a Mac user and curiously interested, read on.

I didn't even try this with any versions of Windows. I bought this with the intention of using it with my Macs. It is designed for Windows 8 as it has gesture support for that OS. For OS X, forget about any gestures and assume it will be a 3 button mouse.


The reason why I wanted it because I wanted to remove the clutter on my desk when I switch between Desktop and laptop. I have the Logitech bluetooth K810/K811 keyboards and I can switch back-n-forth by toggling the Bluetooth presets. It comes in handy. This isn't a multi-device Bluetooth mouse but I figure I can use the Bluetooth on my 15" Retina while the RF USB dongle can be used for other computers that dock into my Caldigit Docking station.



(here it is flat in laser pointer mode)




Bluetooth pairing was a real pain. It took me 20 minutes to get this paired and dozen of other Internet postings indicate this was problematic. I had to toggle to laser pointer for 3 seconds, then back to bluetooth and I held the three mouse buttons until the light flashed orange. Once it flashed, I was able to get it paired. It did take several tries. Once paired, everything was good to go. I also tried the dongle as well.


Operation and handling. 

Well, I'll say this now. This isn't a good mouse. It looks very pretty and has that cool laser pointer feature. It moves too fast and erratic. It is too sensitive. I have a lot of Bluetooth mouses from no-name, Chinese $10 bargain bin Fry's specials to Microsoft, Logitech, and Apple.  From a comparison stand-point, this is definitely a $20 mouse. I would not spend $50 on this. Also, it doesn't even feel ergonomic.  There are no real gestures. You can glide and slide the middle button and it would sometimes scroll. If you slide the upper portion of the middle button, you can sometimes move forward and backwards on browser pages. However, these operations were sporadic. Scrolling didn't always work. I think there has to be some sort of sensitivity controls. They probably have this as a driver download or something for Windows 8 but nothing like that exist on OS X.





(next to a Magic Mouse)


In conclusion, this is definitely worth only $20. It is cool in the respect you can use either Bluetooth or a USB RF dongle. The laser pointer is pretty gimmicky but cool. I'll keep it for a while because I do like the size when it is transformed into a flat slate. I guess it may be better if I actually used Windows with this except my Windows machines are only accessible via Remote Console.



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